GeniesLoki

Yeah, this seems basically plausible to me.

I'd maybe also add that I think many of the useful tools to deal with these problems are implicitly denied to men (often by themselves) because they've been female coded - e.g. therapy is seen as much more shameful for men than for women. (Not that therapy is a panacea)

I object to "by themselves" when the behavior is the result of abusive conditioning. The implication is that men are to blame for those decisions and no societal change is needed to encourage and support them.

Compare: anorexics reject food "by themselves". But supporting an anorexic does not mean just yelling at them "EAT THE FOOD". Likewise supporting men to get therapy does not just mean yelling "GO TO THERAPY".

Sorry, by "by themselves" I meant "by other men" rather than by the individuals who are failing to seek therapy. I agree that this is the result of abusive conditioning and needs a systemic approach to fix. I'm certainly against yelling "go to therapy" at anyone.

TBH I'm mostly on whether therapy helps at the individual level at all - I think it's much more useful to have a whole bunch of therapy skills in the water in a community than therapy is for individuals themselves.

(I think therapy clearly helps if you have a great patient/therapist match, a willingness to work on your problems yourself, a lot of money to throw at the problem, and the sort of problems that are amenable to solving with therapy, but that's a lot of preconditions)

I think therapy has become a dumping ground where instead of saying the reactionary "shut up and deal" (because society at large doesn't want to support you) you can say the progressive "go to therapy" (because society at large doesn't want to support you)